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The structure of French society actually enables this: Even a city like Paris is a series of small villages. You know your neighbors, your local shop owners and the regulars at the café on the corner. Gossip spreads like Metro disruptions during a grève. The way to keep social harmony is to watch your mouth: Even if everyone knows M. Tringler and Mme. Pouffiasse are fucking, they keep their mouths shut (at least when M. Pouffiasse and Mme. Tringler are around).
In the States, on the other hand, we have quite a different culture. As Max Weber wrote more than a century ago in his essay "Churches and Sects in North America," we're the inheritors (or victims) of the Protestant ethic. The U.S. is an alienated frontier of vast distances populated by dislocated immigrants. The only proof you had that someone wouldn't rip you off was that they had been vetted by the congregation of a church and admitted into the fold — which means it fell to your neighbors to police your behavior.
In other words, in order for people to trust you and accord you any sort of status as a member of the community, you had to follow the Ten Commandments, or at least appear to follow them. Social capital depends on belonging to a church, which in turn depends on acting like a mensch. "As far as I am concerned, everyone can believe what he likes, but if I discover
To the French, cheating is not so much accepted as regarded. |
that a client doesn't go to church, then I wouldn't trust him to pay me fifty cents," a traveling salesman said to Weber as he was traveling through Oklahoma. (If you want to read more on Weber's ideas about Protestantism and American national character, check out this two-part essay.)
Thus, the different reception between the dangerous liaisons chez Sarkozy and Lewinskygate. Attacking Bill Clinton on the grounds he was an adulterer was actually a brilliant strategy, since an American politician's public performance of virtue is what makes him trustworthy as a leader. When Clinton was proven to be a sinner like the rest of us, he was open to attack. The French, on the other hand, have a more realistic view of things. They expect their politicians to have affairs — not only as a proof of virility and status, but it also shows that they have the necessary guile to succeed in politics. After all, you just can't trust a man who's faithful to his wife.
In the end, Brits and Americans probably stray just as much as the French. The difference is that to our minds, extracurricular sex is something morally shameful, to be hidden away. If it happens, it's grounds for ending a relationship. To the French, it's not so much accepted as regarded, much like men over forty wearing Speedos at the beach, as an inevitable part of life and nothing to make too big a fuss over. We might even (if the popularity of clubs échangistes in Paris is any indication) regard it as on the level of a national fetish — and, all things considered, I'll take the French national fetish over the German any day.
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©2007 Ken Mondschein and Nerve.com |
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